Prepared by Jermaine McCalpin and Damion K. Blake*
The list that follows is meant to provide some important texts for anyone who is interested in having a robust understanding of history, politics, philosophy. It does not claim to be authoritative or complete. Rather, it represents some helpful sources for the compilers who hope that it will be a useful in understanding the contemporary, global and American developments in light of history and its role in social and political change.
Black History
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa – Walter Rodney
They Came Before Columbus – Ivan van Sertima
The Destruction of Black Civilization – Chancellor Williams
Stolen Legacy – George James
A Black Women’s History of the United States – Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross
Slavery and Social Death – Orlando Patterson
Capitalism and Slavery – Eric Williams
Black Jacobins – CLR James
Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust – John Henrik Clarke
Medical Apartheid – Harriet Washington
Race and Philosophy
The Racial Contract – Charles Mills
Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey – Amy Jacques Garvey
The Wretched of the Earth – Franz Fanon
Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment – Kimberle Crenshaw
Race: a philosophical introduction – Paul C. Taylor
On Race and Philosophy – Lucius Outlaw
Race Matters – Cornel West
Black Feminist Thought – Patricia Hill Collins
Black Skins, White Masks – Franz Fanon
Blackness Visible – Charles Mills
Black Bodies, Whites Gazes – George Yancy
Race and Racism
Racist America – Joe Feagin
White Fragility – Robin Diangelo
Racism: a short history – George Frederickson
Eloquent Rage- Brittney Cooper
The Autobiography of Malcolm X – Malcolm X
Stamped from the Beginning – Ibrahim X. Kendi
Black on Black Violence – Amos Wilson
Me and White Supremacy – Layla F. Saad
So you want to talk about race – Ijeoma Oluo
Chokehold: Policing Black Men – Paul Butler
Americanah – Chimamanda Adichie
The Fire Next Time – James Baldwin
Brown Girl Dreaming – Jacqueline Woodson
The Emperor Has no Clothes – Tema Okun
Slavery by Another Name – Douglas Blackmon
An African American and Latinx History of the United States – Paul Ortiz
Understanding White Privilege – Frances Kendall
Racism without Racists – Eduardo Bonilla- Silva
America’s Original Sin – Jim Wallis
Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates
How to be an Anti-Racist – Ibrahim X. Kendi
Blackballed: The Black and White Politics of Race on America’s Campuses -Lawrence Ross
I am Because We Are – Fred Lee Hord and Jonathan Scott Lee
The Isis Papers – Frances Cress Welsing
Mainstreaming Black Power – Tom Davies
White Rage – Carol Anderson
Barracoon – Zora Neale Hurston
Race, discipline, punishment and policing
The New Jim Crow – Michelle Alexander
From #Black Lives Matter to Black Liberation – Keaanga -Yamahtta Taylor
Policing Black Bodies – Angela Hattery and Earl Smith
Rise of the Warrior Cop – Radley Balko
Policing the Black man – Angela Davis
Reparations
Should America Pay ? – Raymond Winbush
The Debt- What America Owes Blacks – Randal Robinson
The Case for Black Reparations – Boris I Bittker
From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century – William A. Darity and A. Kirsten Mullen
Reparations for Slavery: A Reader – Ronald P. Salzberger and Mary C. Turck
Long Overdue: The Politics of Racial Reparations- Charles Henry
*Dr. Jermaine McCalpin is Chair, African /African American Studies, New Jersey City University.
Dr. Damion K. Blake is Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science & Policy Studies, Elon University.